I met Nicole this morning not at my usual downtown St. Petersburg spot, but nearby at Northshore Dog Park as she had a specific assignment from her photojournalism class to photograph dogs. She will be taking my 1-on-1DSLR Photography Lessons to help her with that class and to be better at photography in general. With the shots I was able to help her make this morning I am confident she will show up with the best shots in her class!

As Nicole needed to get a couple of very specific shots, and the number of dogs in the park was not a constant, for this first lesson I mostly just had her jump to the right settings for photographing dogs in motion so she could get the shots for sure, and then filled in the details as we went along. Despite the overcast skies and puddles, we were fortunate that there were any dogs there, and even more fortunate that there were very playful ones that allowed Nicole to capture the insane faces dogs make as they wrestle with each other resulting in dynamic shots with a shallow DoF as I had Nicole shooting in Shutter Priority mode at 1/500th and ISO 400 allowing for a well exposed and sharp shot.

I was impressed with Nicole's physical shooting skills and her ability to stay low at eye level to the dogs for extended periods of time and produce consistent results, including level horizons. I look forward to helpin her with her next assignment!